The demand for systems that monitor a variety of conditions, such as monitoring homes and businesses for alarm conditions, allowing users to centrally control various devices (such as thermostats, switches, cameras, appliances, etc.), monitors medical conditions, and the like continues to grow as more home and business owners seek better control over their premises and to protect it from various hazards and threats. Such threats include intrusion, fire, carbon monoxide and flooding, among others dangers, which may be monitored locally or remotely by the users, and may also be reported to a monitoring station.
These systems typically employ a control panel and/or gateway that receive “event” (such as triggering alarms) and other information from various sensors and devices, and are used to operate those devices. This may be done locally by the user, or remotely over a network such as via a plain old telephone service (POTS) line, IP Broadband connections, or cellular radio through a user interface—such as a keypad, touch screen, or application operating on a smart phone or tablet. In the case of certain alarm events, a remote monitoring center may also take appropriate action, such as notifying emergency responders.
Such systems may include conventional home security systems and Personal Emergency Response Systems (“PERS”), which are typically professionally installed and professionally monitored safety systems, more recent all-in-one (“AIO”) security panels, or do-it-yourself (“DIY”) security kits and self-contained units (where the various sensors, a control panel, and remote communications are integrated in a single device) have emerged that can be set-up/configured and taken down/relocated by the homeowner.
The aforementioned systems are typically limited to controlling and monitoring life safety features, such as intrusion and fire detection. In order to add life style features (such as lighting control, temperature control and remote viewing of video), an additional controller is often needed and this life style functionality is often are typically operated and managed through a different provider and/or remote system than those used for monitoring life safety. Users often access this system through a separate user interface than the conventional security system—typically a mobile application—through certain security system functionality (particularly ARM/DISARM) may be available through a common interface.
But such systems provide the same life safety and life style functionality to the user interface each time a user accesses the system, irrespective of circumstances. Moreover, such systems are typically passive in that they do not prompt the user for action based upon certain circumstances, but instead only provide such prompts to a user when the user accesses the use interface.